Microstructural modeling of the homogenization heat treatment for AA3XXX alloys

The microstructure evolution during homogenization of AA3XXX alloys involves i) the reduction in the microsegregation formed during solidification, ii) the nucleation, growth and coarsening of intra-granular dispersoids, and iii) the growth/dissolution of inter-granular constituent particles. A model that is able to simulate these phenomena and their interaction has been developed recently. It features fully coupling with CALPHAD software. In this paper, the homogenization model is introduced and its predictive power is demonstrated by successfully reproducing experimentally measured microstructure features for an industrial extrusion alloy (AA3003). As such, the model represents a valuable tool for optimizing the design of industrial AA3XXX alloy homogenization heat treatment parameters.